Brittany Helena Young

I am a PhD candidate and writer researching the emergent startup tech sector in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I am especially interested in both financial and cultural connections between Silicon Valley and the incubators of the Ethiopian capital. In my research, I ask how digital technologies (and to a lesser extent, material technologies) and their entrepreneur-creators are mobilized to serve the purposes of nation-building and craft an image of Ethiopia as a pan-Africanist leader across the continent. My research has been supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, the Fulbright-Hays DDRA, and the Berkeley Rocca Pre-Dissertation Fellowship. I also write essays about the intersections of technology and disability. My non-academic work has been featured in n+1, Wired, Rest of World, and NYT's Wirecutter.